


All the Soarings of My Mind Begin in My Blood

by shaenie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Blood Kink, M/M, Misbehaving in Dreams, Sort Of Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:04:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The front desk has a key for him under the name Julien Antilles, an identity of Arthur’s making that they only use for this particular type of rendezvous. Eames’ hands sweat as he switches his bag from one hand to the other in the elevator; it has been a long time since Arthur made these kind of arrangements. Long enough that Eames had decided that Arthur was done with them, and mourned the loss even as he hoped that Arthur had managed to move past this need.</p><p>He’s the worst kind of hypocrite, of course. He wants Arthur’s games. He’s always wanted them, even as they worried him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Soarings of My Mind Begin in My Blood

**Author's Note:**

> For the Bloodplay square on my Kink Bingo card.
> 
> Huge shout out to [](http://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno)[](http://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno)**anatsuo** for being the only person I know who is in the Inception fandom and being willing to tackle this first thing in the morning.  <3<3

Eames is standing at the baggage carousel, studiously ignoring the members of his team as he does so, which is standard procedure. He can’t help but watch for Arthur, though, just out of the corner of his eye. He isn’t sure things will go as they usually do after a job; inception, after all, isn’t just any job. But he watches anyway, and can’t help being disappointed when Arthur wheels his small bag away from the crowd of people and out the rotating doors of the terminal.

It isn’t until he bends to retrieve his own battered case that he feels the slight pressure-crinkle in the pocket of his slacks. He feels himself relax all over, but he doesn’t take the paper out now. He waits until he’s in a cab on his way to a moderately posh hotel, one that he and Arthur have used before, and then pulls the paper out of his pocket. It’s jagged at one edge, where it’s been torn from Arthur’s moleskin, and reads simply: Langford Suite. There’s no time, which Eames understands means that Arthur is impatient.

After the near-fiasco of inception, Eames isn’t surprised. 

He doesn’t try to tell himself he won’t go. He knows he will, and he knows what will happen, and he doesn’t want to get hard at the idea but he does anyway.

He googles the Langford Suite on his phone, changes the directions he’s given the cabbie, and tips him double when he pulls up outside. The man doesn’t ask, and Eames is glad. He isn’t really up for conversation, even the superficial sort that he usually excels in. Arthur is waiting for him, and that alone is enough to belay all thoughts of applying his charm on unsuspecting cab drivers.

The front desk has a key for him under the name Julien Antilles, an identity of Arthur’s making that they only use for this particular type of rendezvous. Eames’ hands sweat as he switches his bag from one hand to the other in the elevator; it has been a long time since Arthur made these kind of arrangements. Long enough that Eames had decided that Arthur was done with them, and mourned the loss even as he hoped that Arthur had managed to move past this need.

He’s the worst kind of hypocrite, of course. He wants Arthur’s games. He’s always wanted them, even as they worried him.

Arthur opens the door still dressed in his suit, though the tie is missing and the button at the throat is undone. He already has his sleeves rolled up. He gives Eames a long look, and steps aside to let him in.

“You’re sure, then?” Eames asks, setting his bag down by the overstuffed sofa.

“When have I never not been sure?” Arthur asks flatly. He tugs at Eames’ jacket, secretly one of Eames’ favorite things about this particular game. Even if Arthur only wants him half-undressed, it’s better than nothing at all. That he’s so insistent, clearly hurrying Eames along, firms Eames up in his trousers.

Eames rolls up his own sleeves, and Arthur moves to fuss with the PASIV, open and with two lines at the ready, angled on a table between the two large sofas in the suite.

“Don’t tell me you’re not,” Arthur says, and Eames merely shakes his head. Arthur looks satisfied. But he still takes the time to ask if Eames needs to eat first, which Eames shrugs off. He’s hungry, but nothing that can’t wait. _This_ he can’t wait for.

Arthur slides down on one of the couches and plucks up one of the cannula encased needles. He looks at Eames until he selects his own line, and the two of them exchange a long look, Arthur’s lips a little curved in an almost imperceptible smile.

“You remember what you’re doing, Mr. Eames?” he asks, lips still quirked.

“I’m not likely to ever forget,” Eames says truthfully, and slips the needle and cannula into his arm, tugging the needle back out as soon as the cannula is seated. He sees Arthur doing the same on the other couch, and they look at each other for another second before Eames’ eyes start to drift closed.

The surroundings are familiar; Eames has been in Arthur’s little imaginary dojo dozens of times. Arthur isn’t as familiar. He’s wearing yoga pants and a tank top, the outfit leaving very little of Arthur’s stunning musculature and the jutting bones of his slim body to the imagination. Eames has seen it before; he never gets enough of it.

Eames is wearing basketball shorts and nothing else, a fairly standard outfit, and he dodges out of the way as soon as Arthur arches on the balls of his feet and lunges toward Eames. The knife in his hand is slender and razor sharp, and Eames summons up a pair of his own knives, more plain, with thick leather grips and blades standard to military issue combat utility knives.

Eames always uses the same knives. Arthur like to experiment.

“Five score,” Arthur offers, balanced on the balls of his feet and watching Eames with all of his attention.

“Done,” Eames agrees. Five score is low for this type of game. Usually it takes more blood to wind Arthur down. He isn’t sure what it means, and doesn’t spend time on considering it. Arthur slides sleekly along one side of him, feints with the knife in his left hand, and Eames bats it out of the way as he turns on his heel and fends off Arthur’s other knife.

Eames isn’t sure if Arthur hasn’t practiced enough with these blades -- though he finds the idea unlikely -- but they are hiltless, and when their knives scrape together, Eames’ solid combat knife slices skatingly along the back of Arthur’s hand. Arthur leaps back, en garde, but he’s smiling wickedly, all but begging Eames to pursue him. Eames does, trying to ignore the blood welling on the back of Arthur’s hand, but Arthur knows him, knows what distracts him, and he brings up his bloody hand in a lightning fast move that Eames is too slow to counter, slicing a shallow line across his bare chest, just above his nipples. 

Eames jolts in pain, but the look on Arthur’s face is pure fascination, and Eames has never been able to hold out against that look. 

He steps forward and slashes the empty air in front of Arthur, sending him back a step, then presses forward into the space his body has just vacated, using both his knives to keep Arthur pinned -- Arthur’s parries are quick and effortless, but Eames knows them, has fought against them before, and it’s just a matter of time before Eames cocks his elbow, baiting him, and Arthur can’t resist the chance to plunge his blade toward the unprotected flesh of Eames’ ribs. Eames twirls, catching one of Arthur’s knives against his own, and then sweeps Arthur off his feet. 

He lands heavily on his back, and Eames drops on top of him, drawing a line of blood across the line of his collar bone, leaping up and backward before he can allow that line of blood to distract him into losing the fight. Eames is hard in his basketball shorts, and he can see the outline of Arthur’s cock in his yoga pants, but the two of them are dancing around the room now, leaning in and twitching back, metal clanging against metal as they each defend themselves. It’s a fight that neither of them can win unless it’s by luck or design -- they are too evenly matched, as they found out the first time, Eames’ strength the perfect foil to Arthur’s speed -- but winning isn’t the point. 

The blood spilled between them is the point, and Eames jerks back just a hair too late to keep Arthur’s knife from skipping down the side of his cheek. Warm blood runs into the corner of his mouth, and Eames feels himself tightening with desire, both sexual and physical. He is one score down, but he doesn’t care. Blood from his chest has soaked the waistband of his basketball shorts, but he doesn’t care about that, either. He blinks rapidly to make sure his vision isn’t compromised, sees Arthur come in low and to the side. Eames waits until the very last second to counter, spinning and knocking one of Arthur’s knives wide, spinning again so that he’s inside Arthur’s guard, and drawing a double line of blood across Arthur’s tank top, practically slashing it completely clear of Arthur’s body.

Arthur falls back into a quick roll, and Eames can feel him taking mental stock of himself, but he’s on his feet in only a moment. “Impressive,” Arthur says, his normally cool voice sounding completely raw and open, hoarse and hot with adrenaline. 

“Thank you,” Eames say, feet circling, trying to ponder whether Arthur would fall for that kind of move again. Eames doubts it. Arthur is nothing if not a fast learner.

“What was your favorite part?” Arthur asks, circling with Eames, his face animated, smiling widely enough that his incongruent but completely irresistible dimples show. He’s doing it on purpose, Eames knows. Arthur knows all his weak spots.

“I wish I could have seen you in zero gee,” Eames admits honestly. “I bet you were a badass.”

Arthur’s grin is impish. “I was.” Then he dashes to one side, bare feet actually slapping along the lower angle of the wall for a few seconds, and flips neatly over Eames head. Eames hesitates -- he could block Arthur’s strike (probably), or at least take some of the force behind it, but he turns too slowly, and Arthur slices open a gash on the side of his ribs with one knife, and holds the other just barely pricking at the side of his throat.

“Five score,” Arthur breathes heavily, and Eames’ obediently drops his knives. He doesn’t always let Arthur win. He doesn’t even do it often. But it’s been a long time, and Eames’ appreciates Arthur when he gloats enough to admit that he is probably just a little love sick.

They are both covered in blood, and in any real world situation, would have to visit the hospital and explain their multiple knife wounds.

In this situation, Arthur grasps both of Eames’ hands in one of his and pulls him toward a door on the far wall of the dojo.

Eames’ heart pounds, and he wants desperately for it to be the right room, but he resists not at all. He’ll agree to whatever room Arthur wants him in.

It is the right room, though. Eames has always wondered how Arthur managed to capture the image of Eames’ light and airy bedroom in the walk up in France, especially since as far as Eames knows, Arthur has never been inside the place.

The bed is wide and long, and Eames know that if he looked, he’d see all the other touches that make the room his, but he’s arrested by the bed, made up in white sheets with a white coverlet, and Arthur doesn’t put up a fight at all as Eames spins him down onto it, watching the red of blood stains spread out from the injuries on Arthur’s body.

“Come on,” Arthur says. He’s arching his back and wriggling out of the yoga pants. The tank top he merely tears free along the rents Eames left in it. Eames doesn’t hesitate to shove his basketball shorts down his thighs, and Arthur makes a low, pleased sound, catching Eames’ wrist and pulling him down to the bed. Blood streaks the bed clothes, and Arthur arches up against him, spreading blood from Eames’ chest against Arthur’s. He reaches down with his bloodied hand and encircles Eames’ cock, letting out a little huff of pain while Eames arches into his grip.

“Yeah,” Arthurs slurs, and Eames’ presses his palm against the criss-crossed cuts on Arthur’s chest. Arthur arches into the caress, making a pain sound, but at the same time he bucks his hips up against Eames thigh, his cock a hard brand against Eames’ skin.

“God,” Eames groans. He cups his palm along Arthur’s collar bone and Arthur squirms under the pressure.

“Fuck me,” Arthur half-invites, half-begs, and it’s not the usual way it goes. Whoever scores the requisite number of hits is the one that gets fucked, but Eames isn’t about to argue. “Hurry,” Arthur urges, and Eames complies. They only have so much time under; he doesn’t want the clock to run out.

The lube is where Eames always keeps it -- he doesn’t think about how Arthur knows that well enough to construct this room, either -- and he works Arthur open quickly. In the dream, it isn’t like he can do Arthur any more damage, but that’s not what either of them wants. The knives and the blood are for the damage. The sex is something else entirely.

Still, he’s not sure Arthur is quite ready when he slings his legs up around Eames’ waist and urges him forward. “Arthur,” Eames tries to object, but Arthur’s face is filled with rapture, and Eames can’t resist that any more than he can resist anything about Arthur.

He presses forward and then in, and Arthur shudders around him and breathes frantically against Eames’ cheek, whispering, “Harder, this time, Eames, make me feel it.”

Eames pulls backward and shoves back home into Arthur’s ass, and Arthur groans and brings his hand around to press at the slice along Eames’ face. Eames reacts with a rough, urgent thrust and Arthur lets out a painfully diverting sound, which only urges Eames onward. 

“Like that, like... yes,” Arthur says, and Eames gives up on control and fucks him with rough, long strokes as Arthur explores the injuries on his own body and even runs his fingertips along the injuries on Eames’. Arthur grips his wounded hand into Eames’ hair, and Eames turns his head automatically to run his tongue along the slices on the backs of his fingers. Arthur squirms, frenzied, his cries now almost sounding like wails, and Eames doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to last with the sound of Arthur’s shouts in his ears and the hot, metallic taste of blood on his lips.

It turns out not to matter. Eames spreads his palm and places it on the criss-crossed slices on Arthur’s chest, and Arthur arches wildly and shouts out his orgasm, his blood trickling over Eames’ fingers, his ass unbearably tight around Eames’ cock. Arthur darts forward and laps blood away from Eames’ chest, and the jolt of pleasure is so transcendent that Eames merely clenches his whole body, gathering Arthur up under him, and comes shoving his cock into Arthur again and again, until his body refuses to cooperate anymore, and his limbs grow limp enough to let Arthur rest back onto the bad.

Arthur twists his lower body slightly and Eames turns with the movement, crashing onto his side on the bed. Arthur’s hand hovers for a moment, and then comes to rest against the slash across Eames’ ribs. Eames watches, transfixed, as Arthur brings his hand to his face and licks blood from his fingers.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, dove, but you’re aware you’re a bit twisted, yeah?”

“What does that say about you?” Arthur asks, and traces the cut on Eames’ chest almost absently.

“That I’m a bit twisted about you,” Eames answers, chuckling.

Arthur pins him in place with his dark eyes. “No one else understands,” he says steadily.

“Arthur, love, I’m not sure _I_ understand,” Eames confesses.

Arthur looks momentarily smug. “You do, though. Or you do enough. I’m not the only one covered in blood that isn’t mine.”

“And quite a bit that _is_ mine,” Eames notes. Arthur blinks slowly, but doesn’t look away from Eames’ face.

“This isn’t just for me,” he insists.

“No,” Eames says. “I would do it, though, even if it was.”

Arthur blinks at him, looking a little younger, his face more open than Eames has ever seen. Then he leans over and kisses Eames, something they’ve never done, and Eames has his hands in Arthur’s hair in a heartbeat, oblivious to his many aches and pains and he wallows in the warm, slick pressure of Arthur’s mouth.

Sometime during the kissing they wake up, both sound of body again, though Arthur still looks a little flushed. He winds the tubing up into the PASIV and shuts it up in its case, and Eames watches him, wondering if he’d said too, or maybe too little.

“I have to have the come down,” Arthur says, finally sitting down on the corner of the couch across from Eames. “Without it I get... vicious.”

Eames has seen Arthur in all stages of his work, and has a hard time imagining that the word vicious somehow implies something worse than what he usually is.

“I do dangerous things,” Arthur explains further, and Eames listens hard because it’s not like Arthur at all to explain himself. “I’ve been... without an outlet.” Arthur looks away. “There were a couple of tries, but... No one understands.”

Eames feels a burning flash of jealousy for ‘the couple of tries,’ but attempts to keep it off his face. “You don’t have to look,” he says, going for calm. “I volunteer.”

Arthur stares at him. “This time? Or all the time?” Arthur wants to know.

“Every time you need it,” Eames says truthfully. “If we aren’t together, I’ll get on a plane. Arthur.” Eames tries not to sound pained. “I don’t do this for anyone but you. Never had the urge to. You must know I can’t resist you.”

“Twisted parts included?” Arthur asks, but he’s relaxed against the back of the couch, one arm slung over the side.

“Twisted parts especially,” Eames says.

“There’s more,” Arthur says seriously.

“I would have expected no less,” Eames says, a little amused. “If a little blood play is the first thing that you’re willing to show me, the rest is bound to be frightful.”

“But you still volunteer?”

“Yes,” Eames says. Then, gently, “Wouldn’t you?”

Arthur goes tense for a moment, but then nods slowly.

“No one will understand,” he says.

“Bugger them,” Eames says cheerfully. “I feel no need to defend myself.”

Arthur’s lips quirk. “I know the blood isn’t real, but I still want a shower.” He pauses, as though uncertain, and then adds, “Join me.”

“Always,” Eames says truthfully.


End file.
